Digital clocks have gained wide popularity over the last decade. There have been provided many forms of digital clock mechanisms and many forms of gearings employed in these mechanisms. When a step motor is used to drive the gearing and an odometer type readout is provided, the gearing creates noise. This noise is caused in part by the step motor which irregularly impacts the mating gears causing them to rattle. It might be possible to eliminate most of this rattle by providing precision alignment between the gears. This however will not completely eliminate the rattle.
Moreover, temperature is a problem if the motor pinion is very precisely set and the gearing will bind at low or high temperatures. In commercial digital clocks, the gears are usually made of plastic and the shaft centers are determined by a metal structure. This results in differential temperature coefficients that may also cause binding problems.
A still further problem in these gears that have been set precisely with low backlash, is that they are very vulnerable to the slightest amoung of dust and dirt which also causes binding.
It is a primary object of the present invention to eliminate these prior problems in gearing in digital clocks.